Durham County Council’s cabinet members backed the new Residents’ Charter for its Horden Masterplan, which includes proposals for new high-quality homes and wider improvements in the village.

The charter outlines how the authority will engage with residents and property owners as the project progresses, including providing information on support, compensation and acquisition processes where applicable.

A Horden Masterplan Residents’ Steering Group will also be created, which would bring together residents, non-resident property owners and council representatives to provide ongoing dialogue throughout the scheme.

The council’s Horden Masterplan aims to replace older terraced housing with a mix of modern homes, including family houses, flats and bungalows, to improve housing choice.

Tony Hanson, corporate director of regeneration, economy, and growth, said: “Horden remains one of the most deprived areas in the UK characterised by poor housing conditions, high levels of private rent and low property values, and residents with complex housing and support needs.” 

Phase one of the masterplan, approved in 2024, also includes proposals for improved walking and cycling routes, enhanced public spaces and improvements to key gateways into the village.

During several rounds of public consultation, residents identified concerns including poor housing conditions, anti-social behaviour, drug use and issues relating to some landlords.

Councillor Joe Quinn, the council’s cabinet member for planning, investments and assets, said: “We want the charter to help build trust, and the residents’ steering group will be a key part of this, allowing for continual conversation with people in the masterplan area.”

The council has committed £6.2 million to the scheme and has secured a further £4.5 million from the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority.

The draft charter will be subject to public consultation before a final version is adopted.

Jaylen Brown’s time in Boston has come to a surprising end, with the Celtics deciding to trade him to one of their most storied rivals.

Brown — the 2024 NBA Finals MVP, a five-time All-Star and the league’s fourth-leading scorer this past season — is getting traded by the Celtics to the Philadelphia 76ers, a person with knowledge of the deal’s terms said Wednesday.

Boston is getting Paul George, along with a slew of draft capital that could become two first-round picks and two second-round picks, said the person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the trade does not yet have the required league approvals.

ESPN first reported the trade agreement, and the terms were later confirmed by The Boston Globe.

Add this move to the list of blockbuster moves across the NBA so far this offseason. LeBron James is leaving the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent, and now this trade joins a long list of moves that involve All-Star-caliber players — like Giannis Antetokounmpo going from Milwaukee to Miami, Kawhi Leonard and Brandon Ingram headlining a swap between the Toronto Raptors and Los Angeles Clippers, and Ja Morant getting traded to Portland by Memphis.

Now, this.

It’s a move that breaks up what has been one of the league’s most successful 1-2 punches in Brown and Jayson Tatum, who helped carry the Celtics to the 2024 NBA title.

Tatum missed most of this past season while recovering from an Achilles tear that happened during the 2025 playoffs, meaning Brown had to carry even more of the load for Boston — and he wound up with career-best averages of 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game.

It seemed, though, that Brown has felt underappreciated, especially after it became known that Boston had included him in trade talks with Milwaukee when Antetokounmpo was on the market.

“Nobody has won more combined regular-season and playoff games since I entered the league 10 years ago,” Brown posted on social media over the weekend. He’s right: The Celtics have won 523 games with Brown in the lineup, including playoff contests, which is six more than Denver has won with Nikola Jokic over that span.

Brown now gets to be part of a squad in Philadelphia alongside guard Tyrese Maxey and center Joel Embiid — someone who Brown recently called a flopper on a livestream.

“Joel Embiid is a great player, one of the best bigs in (expletive) basketball history,” Brown said. “Flops. He know it. This ain’t breaking news.”

Brown, Maxey (the league’s No. 5 scorer this past season) and Embiid (a two-time NBA scoring champion) could become a positively frightening trio in Philadelphia, and the Celtics deciding to play a role in creating such a triumvirate only adds to the intrigue surrounding why they wanted to trade Brown in the first place.

The trade ends a tremendously disappointing two-year stint for George, who was traded with two years left on a four-year, $212 million free-agent contract. The 36-year-old George never approached his nine-time All-Star form in Philadelphia and his tenure was marred by a 25-game suspension last season for flunking a drug test.

He averaged just 16.7 points in his two seasons in Philadelphia after topping the 20-point mark in nine straight seasons with Indiana, Oklahoma City and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Brown is the latest big name brought in to team with All-Stars and franchise cornerstones Embiid and Maxey. Brown can try and lead the Sixers to their first title since 1983; a feat a steady string of stars from Ben Simmons to James Harden to George failed to do when paired with Embiid and Maxey to make a Big Three.

George cited mental health reasons as to why he failed a drug test and was suspended in late January for violating the terms of the NBA’s anti-drug program. His first year in Philly was marred by knee and adductor injuries that resulted in the forward having one of the worst years of his NBA career.

George averaged 16.2 points in just 41 games, easily his lowest scoring average in a full season since he averaged 12.1 points for Indiana in his second NBA season. He then had surgery in July on his left knee after he was injured during a workout and missed the first 12 games of this past season.

This was the first blockbuster pulled off under new team president Mike Gansey, who replaced the fired Daryl Morey.

Morey was fired after the Sixers failed to advance out of the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs in his tenure and they were swept by the eventual NBA champion Knicks in the second round last season — but only after erasing a 3-1 deficit to oust Boston in Round 1.

“Philadelphia is a good basketball team,” Brown said after the Game 7 loss to the 76ers, surely not knowing at that time that he would be joining them a couple months later.

His job now will be to make that good basketball team even better.

___

AP Sports Writer Dan Gelston in Philadelphia contributed.

___

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba

Mexico have an exceptional record at their home fortress – winning 70 and losing only two of their 89 previous competitive games at the venue, with the last defeat coming back in September 2013 – and are riding a wave at this World Cup, where they have won all four games so far, scoring eight goals and conceding none.

Canadians are feeling a renewed sense of patriotism after President Donald Trump threatened to make their country the 51st state and slapped tariffs on their exports.

Those in Canada reported significantly higher levels of national pride than those in several European countries, including the UK and France, in a new Politico poll.

The poll, conducted by Public First, found that 52 percent of Canadians are very proud of their nationality — a stark contrast to public sentiment less than two years ago.

Canada’s Angus Reid Institute reported in December 2024 that the percentage of Canadians who say they are “very proud” of their nationality dropped from 78 percent to 34 percent since 1985.

“For progressive leaders around the world, Canada may show that there is a way to capture a message of national pride that does not alienate key voters,” Seb Wride, principal at Public First, told Politico.

“But it also shows the challenge in doing so, if what it takes is a geographical neighbor dramatically turning up the temperature as much as Canadians feel Trump has.”

Trump had been floating the idea of acquiring Canada — and other sovereign territories — since before returning to office.

“Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State. They would save massively on taxes and military protection. I think it is a great idea. 51st State!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social in December 2024.

When he began his second term a month later, a more imminent threat loomed — a trade war.

In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order imposing 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada. Then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced tariffs on more than $100 billion of US goods in response.

Trump imposed the 25 percent tariffs against Canada under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. A year later, the Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed under this 1977 law, ruling that they were unconstitutional.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact that Trump negotiated during his first term, went up for renewal Wednesday.

Months-long negotiations between the three countries are likely to ensue as the US pushes for changes to reduce its trade deficits with Canada and Mexico, the Associated Press reported.

While Canada seems to feel a collective sense of pride amid Trump’s aggressive tactics, a majority of Canadians in Politico’s poll note that the country is still divided.

Thirty-nine percent viewed the friction as worse than they can remember, while 27 percent believed the country experienced deeper rifts in the past.

By JAMES COHEN, SPORTS REPORTER and DANIEL MATTHEWS AT THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA STADIUM

Updated: 00:25 BST, 2 July 2026

Taylor’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, dropped in October 2025, with a flurry of lovestruck lyrics about her now fiancé.

She reminisced about date nights spent on ferris wheels, and dreamt of raising kids in a house with “a driveway with a basketball hoop”. There’s also an entire song about his, ahem, manhood.

On the promo trail, she was peppered with questions about the wedding, but gave away very little, except to tell the BBC’s Graham Norton it wouldn’t be a small affair.

Since those interviews, Team Taylor has gone quiet.

A rumoured wedding date of 13 June 2026 passed without incident. A few days later, a flurry of activity at Swift’s Rhode Island mansion had fans speculating that a bachelorette party was in full swing.

Then the New York Times reported that Swift had hired the entirety of Madison Square Gardens for a mega event just before Independence Day weekend.

According to officials with knowledge of the booking, the plans involve an intimate gathering of about 100 people on Thursday 2 July, followed by a more extravagant celebration with about 1,000 guests the next day.

TV cameras have captured trucks unloading drapes, lights, food and even a “40-inch mirror ball”.

Tabloids are speculating about wedding performers and bridesmaids. – but we’ll only know for sure, when Taylor decides it’s time.

And given that she’s recently been spotted at New York’s Electric Lady recording studios, there’s even speculation that confirmation could come in the form of a wedding song.

Watch this space.

And, of course, not to forget a paddle in the sea and an ice-cream!

All these summer moments have been captured by members of our Press Camera Club.

This month they were tasked with taking photos that summed up summer for our monthly prize competition.

Poppy in a patch of poppies and wildflowers – long hot summer – photo by Jenny Molloy

We had some wonderful entries and are sharing our favourite five here.

Our winner – who will receive a £50 cash prize – is Sarah Gabbatiss for a beautiful photo of her daughter running through a field of flowers.

Sarah Gabbatiss took this photo of her daughter picking wildflowers at The Petal Patch near Selby

Well done Sarah and all our runners-up.

Join our club

WOULD you like to see your photographs in The Press and online?

More than 2,500 readers have joined The Press Camera Club, which launched in June 2017 and brings together talented photographers from across York and North and East Yorkshire to share their work, swap tips and take part in themed monthly prize competitions.

Summer by the river means one thing – ice cream. Photo by Lisa Young

To join the free club, simply search for ‘The Press Camera Club’ on Facebook – we’d love to see what our region looks like through your lens.

We will feature pictures from our camera club in The Press and online regularly.

If you like seeing photos of York, please follow us on Instagram too @york.press.

Recommended reading:

Paddling by the sea at Saltburn – photo by Christine Hainsworth

New competition theme:

The new competition theme for July will be #Holidays26 – please use this hashtag when posting your images on Facebook and also please provide a short caption.

The deadline will be the end of July and we will announce the winner in early August.

Good luck!

Redcar and Cleveland was recently named the North East’s “coffee capital” in a study conducted by Manchester marketing agency Dark Horse, and it’s easy to understand why.

A wave of independent coffee shops are turning areas like Middlesbrough and Redcar into must-visit destinations for coffee lovers, and we have compiled a list of five Teesside cafe’s you need to try.

1. Off The Ground Coffee, Middlesbrough

Off the Ground Coffee, Middlesbrough. (Image: Tees Valley Combined Authority)

A speciality coffee shop on Grange Road, Off The Ground has built its reputation on expertly made, ethically sourced coffee and a rotating selection of baked goods. It feels more like a coffee bar than a café‑restaurant, making it ideal for people who care about the brew itself.

2. Café Etch, Middlesbrough

Café Etch, Middlesbrough. (Image: Cafe Etch)

Tucked away on Gilkes Street, Café Etch is an independent spot where the focus is firmly on drinks and cake. Reviewers praise the quality of the coffee, the homemade bakes and the relaxed, creative décor, making it a natural stop for a mid‑morning or afternoon pick‑me‑up.

3. De Melo, Middlesbrough

De Melo, Middlesbrough. (Image: De Melo)

On Linthorpe Road, De Melo is a family‑run venue that locals know for coffee, ice‑cream and desserts. Customer reviews frequently highlight it as a go‑to for a latte and something sweet with a range of treats on offer.

4. Cacau Brazilian Patisserie, Redcar

Cacau Brazilian Patisserie, Redcar. (Image: Tees Valley Combined Authority)

Cacau is an independently run patisserie in Redcar, consistently ranked among the town’s best cafés. It specialises in Brazilian‑inspired cakes and pastries, paired with good coffee, and is regularly recommended to visitors looking for somewhere a bit different for their sweet fix.

5. Route 1 Coffee House, Redcar

Route 1 Coffee House, Redcar. (Image: Route 1 Coffee House)

Route 1 Coffee House offers a modern, relaxed setting for locals and visitors of the seaside town. It features near the top of local “best coffee” lists, with customers praising the friendly service and quality of the drinks.

An honourable mention goes to Headland Espresso, a newer spot on the Stray between Marske and Redcar that’s fast earning a reputation for speciality coffee paired with an unbeatable sea view.

Independent coffee shops and cafés are quietly putting the North East on the map as a friendly, down‑to‑earth destination for people who care about an authentic brew and a freshly baked slice of cake.

The display known as ‘David Bowie: On Tour,’ features 100 relics related to the famous performer and icon.

A selection of these items has never been publicly shown previously.

Recommended reading:

The display is set to come to Ferens Art Gallery in Hull from February to May 2028.

Including artifacts from Bowie’s distinct Ziggy Stardust era, the collection boasts costumes designed by Freddie Burretti and Kansai Yamamoto.

One notable feature of the exhibition is an acoustic guitar utilized during Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust days.

David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust-era acoustic guitar, dating from the 1970’s (Image: David Parry/PA Media Assignments)

Several key members of David Bowie’s Ziggy‑era band, the Spiders from Mars, were Hull musicians, giving the city a direct stake in one of rock’s most famous line‑ups.

Lead guitarist Mick Ronson was born and raised in Hull, working for the council parks department before Bowie recruited him, and went on to become central to the sound and arrangements on albums such as Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust.

Bassist Trevor Bolder, also from the Hull area, joined Ronson in the Spiders from Mars and played on the core Ziggy‑era records, later enjoying a long career with Uriah Heep.

Drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey hailed from Driffield and completed the Yorkshire rhythm section, meaning Bowie’s most iconic band was anchored by a trio of musicians rooted in the Hull and East Riding scene.

The exhibition will be divided into four sections.

Along with the already mentioned items, there will also be concept art for the cover of Low, Bowie’s apartment keys from Berlin – where he worked on albums like Low and Heroes, and a Grafton Alto saxophone, Bowie’s first instrument, bought by his father in 1961.

The Natasha Korniloff-designed costume Bowie wore in the 1980 Ashes To Ashes video and a clapperboard from The Man Who Fell To Earth (1975) will also be on showcase.

David Bowie’s storyboard sketch for ‘Ashes to Ashes’ music video, dating from 1980 (Image: David Parry/PA Media Assignments)

Sir Tristram Hunt, the V&A director, said: “David Bowie: On Tour is a landmark national partnership for the V&A, bringing highlights from an extraordinary archive to audiences across the UK for the first time.

“Working with our colleagues in museums and venues nationwide, we’re opening up Bowie’s story in the places connected to his life and legacy.”

The exhibition debuts at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in Dundee, where the display is set to open in November and run until February 2027.

It then moves on to Showtown in Blackpool (June to September 2027), the Bowes Museum in County Durham (October 2027 to January 2028), and after the Ferens Art Gallery to Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (June to September 2028).

Further venues are expected to be announced in due course.

In September last year, the David Bowie Centre made its debut at the V&A Storehouse, offering a permanent home to the archive filled with unique artifacts.

The much-celebrated figure in the world of music chalked up five UK number one singles and 11 UK number one albums during his lifetime.

Costume designed by Kansai Yamamoto for David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, dating from 1972 (Image: David Parry/PA Media Assignments)

He is especially remembered for iconic tracks like Space Oddity, Ashes To Ashes, and Sound And Vision.

Constantly reinventing his sound and appearance, Bowie first gained fame in the 1970s through glam rock albums such as The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars and Aladdin Sane.

The eclectic Bowie also explored genres such as soul, dance, and jazz, collaborating with artists like Queen, Mick Jagger, and Trent Reznor.

‘Blackstar’ was Bowie’s final album, released two days before his death in 2016.

Motherwell and Wishaw MSP Clare Adamson chose Les Hoey to be her guest on the day.

Wishaw charity king Les Hoey joined other local heroes from across the country at the official opening of the Scottish Parliament.

Motherwell and Wishaw MSP Clare Adamson chose Les to be her guest on the day.

Les has dedicated decades of his life to supporting seriously ill children, young people and their families through the incredible work of the DreamMaker Foundation.

Ms Adamson said: “Through his vision, compassion and determination, Les has helped create life-changing experiences and lasting memories for children facing some of the most difficult challenges imaginable.”

On the day, King Charles praised the Tartan Army as he opened the Scottish Parliament for the first time in his reign.

The monarch hailed Scotland’s football fans for demonstrating the country’s “rich culture” and “friendliness”.

The occasion began with the Crown of Scotland being escorted down the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle, before being taken into Parliament alongside the Elizabeth Sword through a guard of honour made up of young people.

The mace, Crown and sword were carried into the chamber in a procession featuring three Team Scotland athletes preparing to compete in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this summer.

Speaking after the King’s speech, John Swinney, First Minister and SNP leader, welcomed the monarch and emphasised the connection between England and Scotland.

He said; “Last time we welcomed a deeply respected Elizabeth, Queen of Scots. This time we welcome with the same respect Charles, King of Scots, a new monarch rooted in the deep, rich ground of the sovereignty of a people and a place that goes back many many generations.”

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